The line you cannot cross

Google publishes review policies for its Maps and Business Profile content. You can reach them from the help links inside any Business Profile, and you should read them yourself rather than trusting a summary on a page you found. Read them today, before you sell anything. What follows is the short version as of the checked date on this course, and it is not legal advice.

Rule one: never trade anything for a review

Offering a discount, a free drink, a loyalty stamp, a raffle entry, a tip, or anything else of value in exchange for a review is not allowed. It does not become allowed by adding the words honest review. It does not become allowed because the customer would have left a good one anyway.

This matters to you specifically, because a 10% off sign next to the card is the first idea most owners have, out loud, in front of you. If you nod along, you have just designed a policy violation into their counter. Have the answer ready: you can ask, you cannot pay.

Rule two: never filter who gets asked

Review gating is the practice of catching the customer first, asking privately how it went, then sending the happy ones to Google and routing the unhappy ones to a private complaint form. It looks reasonable when it is drawn on a whiteboard. It is against the policy, and it wears friendlier names: feedback funnel, smart routing, a quick check before we send them. If a pitch you are copying has a step that decides who reaches Google, that step is gating, whatever it is called.

The difference between gating and not gating is one word: who. Not what you say, not how you ask, not the design of the card. Who gets asked. Everyone, or only the ones you already know are pleased. Ask everyone and you are inside the line. Sort them first and you are outside it, no matter how the landing page is worded.

Rule three: no reviews that are not real

No writing reviews yourself. No staff or family posting as customers. No buying them, and no accepting a job where that is the actual ask dressed up as marketing. In the United States the Federal Trade Commission also has a rule covering fake and paid reviews and testimonials. Look it up on ftc.gov before anybody hands you money for something in this area, and take your own advice if you are not in the US: the platform rule and the consumer-protection rule are two separate things and you are standing under both.

Why you care, when the penalty is theirs

Two reasons, and neither is about being nice. First, this is a walk-in business inside one town. Your entire pipeline is owners talking to other owners. One shop that gets reviews stripped after buying your system is not one lost customer, it is a story that travels a street faster than you can walk it.

Second, the honest version is a better pitch. Anyone can print a QR code. Being the person who explains the line, unprompted, in the first two minutes, is a real difference and it is free. It also sets up the moment later when you say no to a paying customer, because you already told them what you would not do before they asked.

What you can do, all day, with no risk

• Make the ask take ten seconds instead of a minute. That is the card.
• Make asking a habit rather than a decision: a card at every station, and one sentence the staff already know by heart.
• Ask at the right moment, in person, by someone whose name the customer knows, right after the work is done.
• Ask everybody, including the ones you are not sure about. This is the whole difference, and it is also the part that makes the reviews worth reading.
• Teach the owner to reply to reviews, good and bad. Replying is theirs to do, it is allowed, and it is the thing most of them are not doing.

The sentence to have ready

An owner will ask you, in a friendly voice, whether you can make sure the bad ones do not go up. Do not improvise. Say something close to: I cannot build that. Filtering who gets asked is against Google's policy, and it is your profile that takes the hit, not mine. What I can do is make it easy to ask everyone, right at the end, when they are still standing here.

Then stop talking. Some of them will buy anyway. A few will not, and you will walk out of a shop having turned down money, which is a strange feeling the first time and a normal one by the fifth.